Marie+Benzing


 * SUMMARY: Marie Benzing, age 28, died February 17, 1917 after an abortion perpetrated in Chicago by Dr. Helen Dugdale.**

On February 17, 1917, 28-year-old homemaker Marie Benzing died at Chicago Union Hospital from septicemia caused by an abortion perpetrated that day by Dr. Helen Dugdale. Dugdale was arrested on February 18 and indicted by a Grand jury on March 15, but the case never went to trial.

Dugdale's husband, George B. Dugdale, owned a notorious saloon, the New Delaware, that was dubbed by locals the Bucket of Blood, inspired, it is believed, by another tavern at the corner of 19th and Federal:

"This predecessor is described as follows on the Chicago Crime Scene Project: "Across Federal Street from the Bucket of Blood was the cheapest group of brothels in the city, affectionately known as 'Bed Bug Row,' which operated until 1913. A woman could be had there for $0.25, and there were also peep shows, torture chambers, and drug dens where heroin and morphine could be purchased openly (neither was illegal until the 1910s)."

Whether Dugdale chose to become an abortionist because of the ready business of the prostitutes, or whether she moved into the area in order to be the handiest abortionist for the prostitutes, of course, would only have been known to her.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before //Roe vs. Wade// legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].



 For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] Source: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database



include component="tagCloud"